The Savage Day
Jack Higgins
Action and blood-thirsty suspense from the master of the game.Simon Vaughan knows what it's like to fight a dirty war, he's had first-hand experience in Korea. Now he languishes in a Greek jail.When it comes to firearms and gun-running nobody does it better, but those days are behind him, until the British army propose a deal. His freedom for his help against the IRA in Belfast.He doesn't haven't any choice, if he wants his freedom back he'll have to conquer a new battlegroung…
JACK HIGGINS
THE SAVAGE DAY
Contents
Title Page (#u0b4c707a-2200-5a6f-8d46-4d6e804a47e3)Publisher’S Note (#u38c2e88a-9eaa-5c0f-9b56-927ed8e0c92a)Dedication (#u35281ffb-55cf-591f-bff0-66e0d9af279c)Epigraph (#u9ca0c128-dac9-5aec-a936-d15bd0e0e4f1)Chapter One: Execution Day (#u39df8616-7dcb-51d1-9d70-98d4478f50ed)Chapter Two: Meyer (#u0463f8f4-f565-56c2-8dd2-e0afbd3f4a56)Chapter Three: Night Sounds (#uf125fe9b-417e-5722-a817-013cee6f8ec9)Chapter Four: In Harm’S Way (#u1b692ef9-e219-5359-bcde-604a995d6660)Chapter Five: Storm Warning (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six: Bloody Passage (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven: When That Man Is Dead And Gone (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight: Interrogation (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine: Spanish Head (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten: Run For Your Life (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven: The Small Man (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve: The Race North (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen: May You Die In Ireland (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen: Dark Waters (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fifteen: Fire From Heaven (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Series Title (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PUBLISHER’S NOTE (#ued5bab48-83bb-552e-93a3-84781cfb96f5)
THE SAVAGE DAY was first published in the UK by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd in 1972 and in 1977 by Pan Books, but has been out of print for some years.
In 2008, it seemed to the author and his publishers that it was a pity to leave such a good story languishing on his shelves. So we are delighted to be able to bring back THE SAVAGE DAY for the pleasure of the vast majority of us who never had a chance to read the earlier editions.
And this one for young Sean Patterson
Between two groups of men that want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds I see no remedy except force … It seems to me that every society rests on the death of men.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
1 (#ued5bab48-83bb-552e-93a3-84781cfb96f5)
Execution Day
They were getting ready to shoot somebody in the inner courtyard, which meant it was Monday because Monday was execution day.
Although my own cell was on the other side of the building, I recognized the signs: a disturbance from those cells in the vicinity from which some prisoners could actually witness the whole proceeding, and then the drums rolling. The commandant liked that.
There was silence, a shouted command, a volley of rifle fire. After a while, the drums started again, a steady beat accompanying the cortège as the dead man was wheeled away, for the commandant liked to preserve the niceties, even on Skarthos, one of the most unlovely places I have visited in my life. A bare rock in the Aegean with an old Turkish fort on top of it containing three thousand political detainees, four hundred troops to guard them and me.
I’d had a month of it, which was exactly four weeks too long and the situation wasn’t improved by the knowledge that some of the others had spent up to two years there without any kind of trial. A prisoner told me on exercise one day that the name of the place was derived from some classical Greek root meaning barren, which didn’t surprise me in the slightest.
Through the bars of my cell you could see the mainland, a smudge on the horizon in the heat haze. Occasionally there was a ship, but too far away to be interesting, for the Greek Navy ensured that most craft gave the place a wide berth. If I craned my head to the left when I peered out there was rock, thorn bushes to the right. Otherwise there was nothing and nothing to do except lie on the straw mattress on the floor, which was exactly what I was doing on that May morning when everything changed.
There was the grate of the key in the lock quite unexpectedly as the midday meal wasn’t served for another three hours, then the door opened and one of the sergeants moved in.
He stirred me with his foot. ‘Better get up, my friend. Someone to see you.’
Hope springing eternal, I scrambled to my feet as my visitor was ushered in. He was about fifty or so at a guess, medium height, good shoulders, a snow-white moustache, beautifully clipped and trimmed, very blue eyes. He wore a panama, lightweight cream suit, an Academy tie and carried a cane.
He was, or had been, a high ranking officer in the army, I was never more certain of anything in my life. After all, it takes an old soldier to know one.
I almost brought my heels together and he smiled broadly. ‘At ease, Major. At ease.’
He looked about the cell with some distaste, poked at the bucket in the corner with his cane and grimaced. ‘You really have got yourself into one hell of a bloody mess, haven’t you?’
‘Are you from the British Embassy in Athens?’ I asked.
He pulled the only stool forward, dusted it and sat down. ‘They can’t do a thing for you in Athens, Vaughan. You’re going to rot here till the colonels decide to try you. I’ve spoken to the people concerned. In their opinion, you’ll get fifteen years if you’re lucky. Possibly twenty.’
‘Thanks very much,’ I said. ‘Most comforting.’
He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and threw them across. ‘What do you expect? Guns for the rebels, midnight landings on lonely beaches.’ He shook his head. ‘What are you, anyway? The last of the romantics?’
‘I’d love to think so,’ I said. ‘But as it happens, there would have been five thousand pounds waiting for me in Nicosia if I’d pulled it off.’
He nodded. ‘So I understand.’
I leaned against the wall by the window and looked him over. ‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘Name’s Ferguson,’ he said. ‘Brigadier Harry Ferguson, Royal Corps of Transport.’
Which I doubted, or at least the Corps of Transport bit, for with all due deference to that essential and important branch of the British Army, he just didn’t look the type.
‘Simon Vaughan,’ I said. ‘Of course, you’ll know that.’
‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But then I probably know you better than you know yourself.’
I couldn’t let that one pass. ‘Try me.’
‘Fair enough.’ He clasped both hands over the knob of his cane. ‘Fine record at the Academy, second lieutenant in Korea with the Duke’s. You earned a good MC on the Hook, then got knocked off on patrol and spent just over a year in a Chinese prison camp.’
‘Very good.’
‘According to your file, you successfully withstood the usual brainwashing techniques to which all prisoners were subjected. It was noted, however, that it had left you with a slight tendency to the use of Marxist dialectic in argument.’
‘Well, as the old master put it,’ I said, ‘life is the actions of men in pursuit of their ends. You can’t deny that.’
‘I liked that book you wrote for the War House after Korea,’ he said. ‘A New Conceptof Revolutionary Warfare. Aroused a lot of talk at the time. Of course the way you kept quoting from Mao Tse Tung worried a lot of people, but you were right.’
‘I nearly always am,’ I said. ‘It’s rather depressing. So few other people seem to realize the fact.’
He carried straight on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘That book got you a transfer to Military Intelligence, where you specialized in handling subversives, revolutionary movements generally and so on. The Communists in Malaya, six months chasing Mau Mau in Kenya, then Cyprus and the EOKA. The DSO at the end of that little lot, plus a bullet in the back that nearly finished things.’
‘Pitcher to the well,’ I said. ‘You know how it is.’
‘And then Borneo and the row with the Indonesians. You commanded a company of native irregulars there and enjoyed great success.’
‘Naturally,’ I said. ‘Because we fought the guerrillas on exactly their own terms. The only way.’
‘Quite right, and now the climax of the tragedy. March 1963, to be precise. The area around Kota Baru was rotten with Communist terrorists. The powers that be told you to go in and clear them out once and for all.’
‘And no one can say I failed to do that,’ I said with some bitterness.
‘What was it the papers called you. The Beast of Selengar? A man who ordered the shooting of many prisoners, who interrogated and tortured captives in custody. I suppose it was your medals that saved you and that year in prison camp must have been useful. The psychiatrists managed to do a lot with that. At least you weren’t cashiered.’
‘Previous gallant conduct,’ I said. ‘Must remember his father. Do what we can.’
‘And since then, what have we? A mercenary in Trucial Oman and the Yemen. Three months doing the same thing in the Sudan and lucky to get out with your life. Since 1966, you’ve worked as an agent for several arms dealers, mostly legitimate. Thwaite and Simpson, Franz Baumann, Mackenzie Brown and Julius Meyer amongst others.’
‘Nothing wrong with that. The British Government makes several hundred million pounds a year out of the manufacture and sale of arms.’
‘Only they don’t try to run them into someone else’s country by night to give aid and succour to the enemies of the official government.’
‘Come off it,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly what they’ve been doing for years.’
He laughed and slapped his knee with one hand. ‘Damn it all, Vaughan, but I like you. I really do.’
‘What, the Beast of Selengar?’
‘Good God, boy, do you think I was born yesterday? I know what happened out there. What really happened. You were told to clear the last terrorist out of Kota Baru and you did just that. A little ruthlessly perhaps, but you did it. Your superiors heaved a sigh of relief, then threw you to the wolves.’
‘Leaving me with the satisfaction of knowing that I did my duty.’
He smiled. ‘I can see we’re going to get along just fine. Did I tell you I knew your father?’
‘I’m sure you did,’ I said. ‘But just now I’d much rather know what in the hell you’re after, Brigadier.’
‘I want you to come and work for me. In exchange, I’ll get you out of here. The slate wiped clean.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Quite reasonable people to deal with, the Greeks, if one knows how.’
‘And what would I have to do in return?’
‘Oh, that’s simple,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to take on the IRA in Northern Ireland for us.’
Which was the kind of remark calculated to take the wind out of anyone’s sails and I stared at him incredulously.
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘I can’t think of anyone better qualified. Look at it this way. You spent years in Intelligence working against urban guerrillas, Marxists, anarchists, revolutionaries of every sort, the whole bagshoot. You know how their minds work. You’re perfectly at home fighting the kind of war where the battlefield is back alleys and rooftops. You’re tough, resourceful and quite ruthless, which you’ll need to be if you’re to survive five minutes with this lot, believe me.’
‘Nothing like making it sound attractive.’
‘And then, you do have one or two special qualifications, you must admit that. You speak Irish, I understand, thanks to your mother, which is more than most Irishmen do. And then there was that uncle of yours. The one who commanded a flying column for the IRA in the old days.’
‘Michael Fitzgerald,’ I said. ‘The Schoolmaster of Stradballa.’
He raised his eyebrows at that one. ‘My God, but they do like their legends, don’t they? On the other hand, the fact that you’re a half-and-half must surely be some advantage.’
‘You mean it might help me to understand what goes on in those rather simple peasant minds?’
He wasn’t in the least put out. ‘I must say I’m damned if I can sometimes.’
‘Which is exactly why they’ve been trying to kick us out for the past seven hundred years.’
He raised his eyebrows at that and there was a touch of frost in his voice. ‘An interesting remark, Vaughan. One which certainly makes me wonder exactly where you stand on this question.’
‘I don’t take sides,’ I said. ‘Not any more. Just tell me what you expect. If I can justify it to myself, I’ll take it on.’
‘And if you can’t, you’ll sit here for another fifteen years?’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, I doubt that, Major. I doubt that very much indeed.’
And there was the rub, for I did myself. I took another of his cigarettes and said wearily, ‘All right, Brigadier, what’s it all about?’
‘The Army is at war with the IRA, it’s as simple as that.’
‘Or as complicated.’
‘Exactly. When we first moved troops in during ’69 it was to protect a Catholic minority who had certain just grievances, one must admit that.’
‘And since then?’
‘The worst kind of escalation. Palestine, Aden, Cyprus. Exactly the same only worse. Increasing violence, planned assassinations, the kind of mad bombing incidents that usually harm innocent civilians more than the Army.’
‘The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize,’ I said. ‘The only way a small country can take on an empire and win. That was one of Michael Collins’s favourite sayings.’
‘I’m not surprised. To make things even more difficult at the moment, the IRA itself is split down the middle. One half call themselves official and seem to have swung rather to the left politically.’
‘How far?’
‘As far as you like. The other lot, the pure nationalists, Provisionals, Provos, Bradyites, call them what you like, are the ones who are supposed to be responsible for all the physical action.’
‘And aren’t they?’
‘Not at all. The official IRA is just as much in favour of violence when it suits them. And then there are the splinter groups. Fanatical fringe elements who want to shoot everyone in sight. The worst of that little lot is a group called the Sons of Erin led by a man called Frank Barry.’
‘And what about the other side?’ I asked. ‘The Ulster Volunteer Force?’
‘Don’t even mention them,’ he said feelingly. ‘If they ever decide to take a hand, it will be civil war and the kind of bloodbath that would be simply too hideous to contemplate. No, the immediate task is to defeat terrorism. That’s the Army’s job. It’s up to the politicians to sort things out afterwards.’
‘And what am I supposed to be able to achieve that the whole of Military Intelligence can’t?’
‘Everything or nothing. It all depends. The IRA needs money if it’s to be in a position to buy arms on anything like a large enough scale. They got their hands on some in rather a big way about five weeks ago.’
‘What happened?’
‘The night mail boat from Belfast to Glasgow was hijacked by half-a-dozen men.’
‘Who were they? Provos?’
‘No, they were led by a man we’ve been after for years. A real old-timer. Must be sixty if he’s a day. Michael Cork. The Small Man, they call him. Another of those Irish jokes as he’s reputed to be over six feet in height.’
‘Reputed?’
‘Except for a two-year sentence when he was seventeen or eighteen, he hasn’t been in custody since. He did spend a considerable period in America, but the simple truth is we haven’t the slightest idea what he looks like.’
‘So what happened on the mail boat?’
‘Cork and his men forced the captain to rendezvous off the coast with a fifty-foot diesel motor yacht. They offloaded just over half a million pounds’ worth of gold bullion.’
‘And slipped quietly away into the night?’
‘Not quite. They clashed with a Royal Navy MTB early the following morning near Rathlin Island, but managed to get away under cover of fog, though the officer in command thinks they were in a sinking condition.’
‘Were they sighted anywhere else?’
‘A rubber dinghy was found on a beach near Stramore, which is a fishing port on the mainland coast south of Rathlin, and several bodies were washed up during the week that followed.’
‘And you think Michael Cork survived?’
‘We know he did. In fact, thanks to that grand old Irish institution, the informer, we know exactly what happened. Cork was the only survivor. He sank the boat in a place of his own choosing, landed near Stramore in that rubber dinghy and promptly disappeared with his usual sleight of hand.’
I moved to the window and looked out over the blue Aegean and thought of that boat lying on the bottom up there in those cold grey northern waters.
‘He could do a lot with that kind of money.’
‘An approach has already been made in his name to a London-based arms dealer who had the sense to contact the proper authori ties at once.’
‘Who was it? Anyone I know?’
‘Julius Meyer. You’ve acted for him on several occasions in the past, I believe.’
‘Old Meyer?’ I laughed out loud. ‘Now there’s a slippery customer if you like. I wonder why they chose him?’
‘Oh, I should have thought he had just the right kind of shady reputation,’ the Brigadier said. ‘He’s been in trouble often enough, God knows. There was all that fuss with the Spanish Government last year when it came out that he’d been selling guns to the Free Basque movement. He was on every front page in the country for a day or two. The kind of thing interested parties would remember.’
Which made sense. I said, ‘And where do I fit in?’
‘You simply do exactly what you’ve done in the past. Act as Meyer’s agent in this matter. They should find you perfectly acceptable. After all, your past stinks to high heaven very satisfactorily.’
‘Nice of you to say so. And what if I’m asked to act in a mercenary capacity? To give instruction in the handling of certain weapons. That can sometimes happen, you know.’
‘I hope it does. I want you in there up to your ears, as close to the heart of things as possible, because we want that gold, Vaughan. We can’t allow them to hang on to a bank like that, so that’s your primary task. To find out exactly where it is.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Any information you can glean about the Organization, faces, names, places. All that goes without saying, and it would be rather nice if you could get Michael Cork for us if the opportunity arises, or indeed anyone else of similar persuasion that you meet along the way.’
I said slowly, ‘And what exactly do you mean by “get”?’
‘Don’t fool about with me, boy,’ he said, and there was iron in his voice. ‘You know exactly what I mean. If Cork and his friends want to play these kind of games then they must accept the consequences.’
‘I see. And where does Meyer fit into all this?’
‘He’ll co-operate in full. Go to Northern Ireland when necessary. Assist you in any way he can.’
‘And how did you achieve that small miracle? As I remember Meyer, he was always for the quiet life.’
‘A simple question of the annual renewal of his licence to trade in arms,’ the Brigadier said. ‘There is one thing I must stress, by the way. Although you will be paid the remuneration plus allowances suitable to your rank, there can be no question of your being restored to the active list officially.’
‘In other words, if I land up in the gutter with a bullet through the head, I’m just another corpse?’
‘Exactly.’ He stood up briskly and adjusted his panama. ‘But I’ve really talked for quite long enough and the governor’s laid on an MTB to run me back to Athens in half an hour. So what’s it to be? A little action and passion or another fifteen years of this?’
He gestured around the cell with his cane. I said, ‘Do I really have a choice?’
‘Sensible lad.’ He smiled broadly and rapped on the door. ‘We’d better get moving then.’
‘What, now?’
‘I brought a signed release paper with me from Athens.’
‘You were that certain?’
He shrugged. ‘Let’s say it seemed more than likely that you’d see things my way.’
The key turned in the lock and the door opened, the sergeant saluted formally and stood to one side.
The Brigadier started forward and I said, ‘Just one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You did say Royal Corps of Transport?’
He smiled beautifully. ‘A most essential part of the Service, my dear Simon. I should have thought you would have recognized that. Now come along. We really are going to cut it most awfully fine for the RAF plane I’ve laid on from Athens.’
So it was Simon now? He moved out into the corridor and the sergeant stood waiting patiently as I glanced around the cell. The prospect was not exactly bright, but after all, anything was better than this.
He called my name impatiently once more from halfway up the stairs, I moved out and the door clanged shut behind me.
2 (#ued5bab48-83bb-552e-93a3-84781cfb96f5)
Meyer
I first met Julius Meyer in one of the smaller of the Trucial Oman States in June, 1966. A place called Rubat, which boasted a sultan, one port town and around forty thousand square miles of very unattractive desert which was inhabited by what are usually referred to in military circles as dissident tribesmen.
The whole place had little to commend it except its oil, which did mean that besides the sultan’s three Rolls-Royces, two Mercedes and one Cadillac, our American friends not being so popular in the area that year, he could also afford a Chief of Police and I was glad of the work, however temporary the political situation made it look.
I was called up to the palace in a hurry one afternoon by the sultan’s chief minister, Hamal, who also happened to be his nephew. The whole thing was something of a surprise as it was the sort of place where nobody made a move during the heat of the day.
When I went into his office, I found him seated at his desk opposite Meyer. I never did know Meyer’s age for he was one of those men who looked a permanent sixty.
Hamal said, ‘Ah, Major Vaughan, this is Mr Julius Meyer.’
‘Mr Meyer,’ I said politely.
‘You will arrest him immediately and hold him in close confinement at central police headquarters until you hear from me.’
Meyer peered short-sightedly at me through steel-rimmed spectacles. With his shock of untidy grey hair, the fraying collar, the shabby linen suit, he looked more like an unsuccessful musician than anything else. It was much later when I discovered that all these things were supposed to make him look poor, which he certainly was not.
‘What’s the charge?’ I asked.
‘Import of arms without a licence. I’ll give you the details later. Now get him out of here. I’ve got work to do.’
On the way to town in the jeep, Meyer wiped sweat from his face ceaselessly. ‘A terrible, terrible thing all this deceit in life, my friend,’ he said at one point. ‘I mean, it’s really getting to the stage where one can’t trust anybody.’
‘Would you by any chance be referring to our respected Chief Minister?’ I asked him.
He became extremely agitated, flapping his arms up and down like some great shabby white bird. ‘I came in from Djibouti this morning with five thousand MI carbines, all in excellent condition, perfect goods. Fifty Bren guns, twenty thousand rounds of ammunition, all to his order.’
‘What happened?’
‘You know what happened. He refuses to pay, has me arrested.’ He glanced at me furtively, tried to smile and failed miserably. ‘This charge. What happens if he can make it stick? What’s the penalty?’
‘This was a British colony for years so they favour hanging. The Sultan likes to put on a public show in the main square, just to encourage the others.’
‘My God!’ He groaned in anguish. ‘From now on, I use an agent, I swear it.’
Which, in other circumstances, would have made me laugh out loud.
I had Meyer locked up, as per instructions, then went to my office and gave the whole business very careful thought which, knowing my Hamal, took all of five minutes.
Having reached the inescapable conclusion that there was something very rotten indeed in the state of Rubat, I left the office and drove down to the waterfront where I checked that our brand new fifty-foot diesel police launch was ready for sea, tanks full.
The bank, unfortunately, was closed, so I went immediately to my rather pleasant little house on the edge of town and recovered from the corner of the garden by the cistern, the steel cash box containing five thousand dollars mad money put by for a rainy day. As I started back to town, there was a rattle of machine-gun fire from the general direction of the palace, which was comforting, if only because it proved that my judgement was still unimpaired, Rubat, the heat and the atmosphere of general decay notwithstanding.
I called in at police headquarters on my way down to the harbour and discovered, without any particular sense of surprise, that there wasn’t a man left in the place except Meyer, whom I found standing at the window of his cell listening to the sound of small arms fire when I unlocked the door.
He turned immediately and there was a certain relief on his face when he saw who it was. ‘Hamal?’ he enquired.
‘He never was one to let the grass grow under his feet,’ I said. ‘Comes of having been a prefect at Winchester. You don’t look too good. I suggest a long sea voyage.’
He almost fell over himself in his eagerness to get past me through the door.
* * *
As we moved out of harbour, a column of black smoke ascended into the hot afternoon air from the palace. Standing beside me in the wheelhouse, Meyer shook his head and sighed.
‘We live in an uncertain world, my friend.’ And then, dismissing Rubat and its affairs completely, he went on, ‘How good is this boat? Can we reach Djibouti?’
‘Easily.’
‘Excellent. I have first class contacts there. We can even sell the boat. Some slight recompense for my loss and I’ve a little matter of business coming up in the Somali Republic that you might be able to help me with.’
‘What sort of business?’
‘The two thousand pounds a month kind,’ he replied calmly.
Which was enough to shut anyone up. He produced a small cassette tape-recorder from one of his pockets, put it on the chart table and turned it on.
The band which started playing had the unmistakably nostalgic sound of the ’thirties and so did the singer who joined in a few minutes later, assuring me that Every Day’sA Lucky Day. There was complete repose on Meyer’s face as he listened.
I said, ‘Who in the hell is that?’
‘Al Bowlly,’ he said simply. ‘The best there ever was.’
The start of a beautiful friendship in more ways than one.
I was reminded of that first meeting when I went down to Meyer’s Wapping warehouse on the morning following my arrival back in England from Greece, courtesy of Ferguson and RAF Transport Command, and for the most obvious of reasons. When I opened the little judas gate in the main entrance and stepped inside, Al Bowlly’s voice drifted like some ghostly echo out of the half-darkness to tell me that Everything I Have Is Yours.
It was strangely appropriate, considering the setting, for in that one warehouse Meyer really did have just about every possible thing you could think of in the arms line. In fact, it had always been a source of mystery to me how he managed to cope with the fire department inspectors, for on occasion he had enough explosives in there to blow up a sizeable part of London.
‘Meyer, are you there?’ I called, puzzled by the lack of staff.
I moved through the gloom between two rows of shelving crammed with boxes of.303 ammunition and rifle grenades. There was a flight of steel steps leading up to a landing above, more shelves, rows and rows of old Enfields.
Al Bowlly faded and Meyer appeared at the rail. ‘Who is it?’
He had that usual rather hunted look about him as if he expected the Gestapo to descend at any moment, which at one time in his youth had been a distinct possibility. He wore the same steel-rimmed spectacles he’d had on at our first meeting and the crumpled blue suit was well up to his usual standard of shabbiness.
‘Simon?’ he said. ‘Is that you?’
He started down the steps. I said, ‘Where is everyone?’
‘I gave them the day off. Thought it best when Ferguson telephoned. Where is he, by the way?’
‘He’ll be along.’
He took off his glasses, polished them, put them back on and inspected me thoroughly. ‘They didn’t lean on you too hard in that place?’
‘Skarthos?’ I shook my head. ‘Just being there was enough. How’s business?’
He spread his hands in an inimitable gesture and led the way towards his office at the other end of the warehouse. ‘How can I complain? The world gets more violent day by day.’
We went into the tiny cluttered office and he produced a bottle of the cheapest possible British sherry and poured the ritual couple of drinks. It tasted like sweet varnish, but I got it down manfully.
‘This man Ferguson,’ he said as he finished. ‘A devil. A cold-blooded, calculating devil.’
‘He certainly knows what he wants.’
‘He blackmailed me, Simon. Me, a citizen all these years. I pay my taxes, don’t I? I behave myself. When these Irish nutcases approach me to do a deal, I go to the authorities straightaway.’
‘Highly commendable,’ I said and poured myself another glass of that dreadful sherry.
‘And what thanks do I get? This Ferguson walks in here and gives me the business. Either I play the game the way he wants it or I lose my licence to trade. Is that fair? Is that British justice?’
‘Sounds like a pretty recognizable facsimile of it to me,’ I told him.
He was almost angry, but not quite. ‘Why is everything such a big joke to you, Simon? Is our present situation funny? Is death funny?’
‘The sensible man’s way of staying sane in a world gone mad,’ I said.
He considered the point and managed one of those funny little smiles of his. ‘Maybe you’ve got something there. I’ll try it – I’ll definitely try it, but what about Ferguson?’
‘He’ll be along. You’ll know the worst soon enough.’ I sat on the edge of his desk and helped myself to one of the Turkish cigarettes he kept in a sandalwood box for special customers. ‘What have you got that works with a silencer? Really works.’
He was all business now. ‘Handgun or what?’
‘And sub-machine-gun.’
‘We’ll go downstairs,’ he said. ‘I think I can fix you up.’
The Mk IIS Sten sub-machine-gun was especially developed during the war for use with commando units and resistance groups. It was also used with considerable success by British troops on night patrol work during the Korean war.
It was, indeed still is, a remarkable weapon, its silencing unit absorbing the noise of the bullet explosions to an amazing degree. The only sound when firing is the clicking of the bolt as it goes backwards and forwards and this can seldom be heard beyond a range of twenty yards or so.
Many more were manufactured than is generally realized and as they were quite unique in their field, the reason for the lack of production over the years has always been something of a mystery to me.
The one I held in my hands in Meyer’s basement firing range was a mint specimen. There was a row of targets at the far end, life-size replicas of charging soldiers of indeterminate nationality, all wearing camouflaged uniforms. I emptied a thirty-two round magazine into the first five, working from left to right. It was an uncomfortably eerie experience to see the bullets shredding the target and to hear only the clicking of the bolt.
Meyer said, ‘Remember, full automatic only in a real emergency. They tend to overheat otherwise.’
A superfluous piece of information as I’d used the things in action in Korea, but I contented myself with laying the Sten down and saying mildly, ‘What about a handgun?’
I thought he looked pleased with himself and I saw why a moment later when he produced a tin box, opened it and took out what appeared to be a normal automatic pistol, except that the barrel was of a rather strange design.
‘I could get a packet from any collector for this little item,’ he said. ‘Chinese Communist silenced pistol. 7.65 mm.’
It was certainly new to me. ‘How does it work?’
It was ingenious enough. Used as a semiautomatic, there was only the sound of the slide reciprocating and the cartridge cases ejecting, but it could also be used to fire a single shot with complete silence.
I tried a couple of rounds. Meyer said, ‘You like it?’
Before we could take it any further, there was a foot on the stairs and Ferguson moved out of the darkness. He was wearing a dark grey double-breasted suit, Academy tie, bowler hat and carried a briefcase.
‘So there you are,’ he said. ‘What’s all this?’
He came forward and put his briefcase down on the table, then he took the pistol from me, sighted casually and fired. The result was as I might have expected. No fancy shooting through the shoulder or hand. Just a bullet dead centre in the belly, painful but certain.
He put the gun down on the table and glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got exactly ten minutes, then I must be on my way to the War House so let’s get down to business. Meyer, have you filled him in on your end yet?’
‘You told me to wait.’
‘I’m here now.’
‘Okay.’ Meyer shrugged and turned to me. ‘I had a final meeting with the London agent for these people yesterday. I’ve told him it would be possible to run the stuff over from Oban.’
‘Possible?’ I said. ‘That must be the understatement of this or any other year.’
Meyer carried straight on as if I hadn’t interrupted. ‘I’ve arranged for you to act as my agent in the matter. There’s to be a preliminary meeting in Belfast on Monday night. They’re expecting both of us.’
‘Who are?’
‘I’m not certain. Possibly this official IRA leader himself, Michael Cork.’
I glanced at the Brigadier. ‘Your Small Man?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but we don’t really know. All we can say for certain is that you should get some sort of direct lead to him, whatever happens.’
‘And what do I do between now and Monday?’
‘Go to Oban and get hold of the right kind of boat.’ He opened the briefcase and took out an envelope which he pushed across the table. ‘You’ll find a thousand pounds in there. Let’s call it working capital.’ He turned to Meyer. ‘I’m aware that such an amount is small beer to a man of your assets, Mr Meyer, but we wanted to be fair.’
Meyer’s hand fastened on the envelope. ‘Money is important, Brigadier, let nobody fool you. I never turned down a grand in my life.’
Ferguson turned back to me. ‘It seemed to me that the most obvious place for your landing when you make the run will be the north Antrim coast, so Meyer will rent a house in the area. He’ll act as a link man between us once you’ve arrived and are in the thick of it.’
‘You intend to be there yourself?’
‘Somewhere at hand, just in case I’m needed, but one thing must be stressed. On no account are you to approach the military or police authorities in the area.’
‘No matter what happens?’
‘You’re on your own, Simon,’ he said. ‘Better get used to the idea. I’ll help all I can at the right moment, but until then …’
‘I think I get the drift,’ I said. ‘This is one of those jolly little operations that will have everybody from cabinet level down clapping their hands with glee if it works.’
‘And howling for your blood if it doesn’t,’ he said and patted me on the shoulder. ‘But I have every confidence in you, Simon. It’s going to work, you’ll see.’
‘At the moment, I can’t think of a single reason why it should, but thanks for the vote of confidence.’
He closed his briefcase and picked it up. ‘Just remember one thing. Michael Cork may be what some people would term an old-fashioned revolutionary and I think they’re probably right. In other words, he and his kind don’t approve of the indiscriminate slaughter of the innocent for political ends.’
‘But he’ll kill me if he has to, is that what you’re trying to say?’
‘Without a second’s hesitation.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Must rush now, but do promise me one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Get yourself a decent gun.’ He picked up the silenced pistol, weighed it in his hand and dropped it on the table. ‘Load of Hong Kong rubbish.’
‘This one is by way of Peking,’ I told him.
‘All the bloody same,’ he said cheerfully and faded into the darkness. We heard him on the stair for a moment and then he was gone.
Meyer walked up and down, flapping his arms again, extremely agitated. ‘He makes me feel so uncomfortable. Why does he make me feel this way?’
‘He went to what some people would term the right school. You didn’t.’
‘Rubbish,’ he said. ‘You went to the right schools and with you I feel fine.’
‘My mother was Irish,’ I said. ‘You’re forgetting. My one saving grace.’ I tried another couple of shots with the Chinese pistol and shook my head. ‘Ferguson is right. Put this back in the Christmas cracker where you found it and get me a real gun.’
‘Such as?’
‘What about a Mauser 7.63 mm Model 1932 with the bulbous silencer? The kind they manufactured for German counter-intelligence during the second war. There must still be one or two around?’
‘Why not ask me for the gold from my teeth while you’re about it? It’s impossible. Where will I find such a thing these days?’
‘Oh, you’ll manage,’ I said. ‘You always do.’ I held out my hand. ‘If you’ll give me my share of the loot I’ll be on my way. Oban is not just another station on the Brighton line, you know. It’s on the north-west coast of Scotland.’
‘Do I need a geography lesson?’
He counted out five hundred pounds, grumbling, sweat on his face as there always was when he handled money. I stowed it away in my inside breast pocket.
‘When will you be back?’ he asked.
‘I’ll try for the day after tomorrow.’
He followed me up the stairs and we paused at the door of his office. He said awkwardly, ‘Look after yourself, then.’
It was as near as he could get to any demonstration of affection. I said, ‘Don’t I always?’
As I walked away, he went into his office and a moment later Al Bowlly was giving me a musical farewell all the way to the door.
3 (#ued5bab48-83bb-552e-93a3-84781cfb96f5)
Night Sounds
They started shooting again as I turned the corner, the rattle of small arms fire drifting across the water through the fog from somewhere in the heart of the city. It was echoed almost immediately by a heavy machine-gun. Probably an armoured car opening up with its Browning in reply.
Belfast night sounds. Common enough these days, God knows, but over here on this part of the docks it was as quiet as the grave. Only the gurgle of water amongst the wharf pilings to accompany me as I moved along the cobbled street past a row of warehouses.
I didn’t see a soul, which was hardly surprising for it was the sort of place to be hurried through if it had to be visited at all and they’d obviously had their troubles. Most of the street-lamps were smashed, a warehouse a little further on had been burnt to the ground, and at one point rubble and broken glass carpeted the street.
I picked my way through and found what I was looking for on the next corner, a large Victorian public house, the light in its windows the first sign of life I’d seen in the whole area.
The name was etched in acid on the frosted glass panel by the entrance: Cohan’s Select Bar. An arguable point from the look of the place, but I pushed open the door and went in anyway.
I found myself in a long narrow room, the far end shrouded in shadow. There was a small coal fire on the left, two or three tables and some chairs, and not much else except the old marble-topped bar with a mirror behind it that must have been quite something when clipper ships still used Belfast docks. Now it was cracked in a dozen places, the gold leaf on the ornate frame flaking away to reveal cheap plaster. As used by life as the man who leaned against the beer pumps reading a newspaper.
He looked older than he probably was, but that would be the drink if the breath on him was anything to go by. The neck above the collarless shirt was seamed with dirt and he scratched the stubble on his chin nervously as he watched me approach.
He managed a smile when I was close enough. ‘Good night to you, sir. And what’s it to be?’
‘Oh, a Jameson, I think,’ I said. ‘A large one. The kind of night for it.’
He went very still, staring at me, mouth gaping a little and he was no longer smiling.
‘English, is it?’ he whispered.
‘That’s right. Another of those fascist beasts from across the water, although I suppose that depends upon which side you’re on.’
I put a cigarette in my mouth and he produced a box of matches hastily and gave me a light, his hands shaking. I held his wrist to steady the flame.
‘You’re quiet enough in here in all conscience. Where is everybody?’
There was a movement behind me, the softest of footfalls, wind over grass in a forest at nightfall, no more than that. Someone said quietly, ‘And who but a fool would be abroad at night in times like these when he could be safe home, Major?’
He had emerged from the shadows at the end of the room, hands deep in the pockets of a dark blue double-breasted Melton overcoat of a kind much favoured by undertakers, the collar turned up about his neck.
Five foot two or three at the most, I took him for little more than a boy in years at least, although the white devil’s face on him beneath the peak of the tweed cap, the dark eyes that seemed perpetually fixed on eternity, hinted at something more. A soul in torment if ever I’d seen one.
‘You’re a long way from Kerry,’ I said.
‘And how would you be knowing that?’
‘I mind the accent, isn’t that what they say? My mother, God rest her, was from Stradballa.’
Something moved in his eyes then. Surprise, I suppose, although I was to learn that he seldom responded with any kind of emotion to anything. In any event, before he could reply, a voice called softly from the shadows, ‘Bring the major down here, Binnie.’
There was a row of wooden booths, each with its own frosted glass door to ensure privacy, another relic of Victorian times. A young woman sat at a table in the end one. She wore an old trenchcoat and headscarf, but it was difficult to see much more than that.
Binnie ran his hands over me from behind, presumably looking for some sort of concealed weapon, giving me no more than three opportunities of jumping him had I been so disposed.
‘Satisfied?’ I demanded. He moved back and I turned to the girl. ‘Simon Vaughan.’
‘I know who you are well enough.’
‘And there you have the advantage of me.’
‘Norah Murphy.’
More American than Irish to judge from the voice. An evening for surprises. I said, ‘And are you for the Oban boat, Miss Murphy?’
‘And back again.’
Which disposed of the formalities satisfactorily and I pulled a chair back from the table and sat down.
I offered her a cigarette and, when I gave her a light, the match flaring in my cupped hands pulled her face out of the shadows for a moment. Dark, empty eyes, high cheekbones, a wide, rather sensual mouth.
As the match died she said, ‘You seem surprised.’
‘I suppose I expected a man.’
‘Your sort would,’ she said with a trace of bitterness.
‘Ah, the arrogant Englishman, you mean? The toe of his boot for a dog and a whip for a woman. Isn’t that the saying? I would have thought it had possibilities.’
She surprised me by laughing although I suspect it was in spite of herself. ‘Give the man his whiskey, Binnie, and make sure it’s a Jameson. The Major always drinks Jameson.’
He moved to the bar. I said, ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘His name is Gallagher, Major Vaughan. Binnie Gallagher.’
‘Young for his trade.’
‘But old for his age.’
He put the bottle and single glass on the table and leaned against the partition at one side, arms folded. I poured a drink and said, ‘Well, now, Miss Murphy, you seem to know all about me.’
‘Simon Vaughan, born 1931, Delhi. Father a colonel in the Indian Army. Mother, Irish.’
‘More shame to her,’ I put in.
She ignored the remark and carried on. ‘Winchester, Sandhurst. Military Cross with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment in Korea, 1953. They must have been proud of you at the Academy. Officer, gentleman, murderer.’
The American accent was more noticeable now along with the anger in her voice. There was a rather obvious pause as they both waited for some sort of reaction. When I moved, it was only to reach for the whiskey bottle, but it was enough for Binnie whose hand was inside his coat on the instant.
‘Watch yourself,’ he said.
‘I can handle this one,’ she replied.
I couldn’t be certain that the whole thing wasn’t some prearranged ploy intended simply to test me, but the fact that they’d spoken in Irish was interesting and it occurred to me that if the Murphy girl knew as much about me as she seemed to she would be well aware that I spoke the language rather well myself, thanks to my mother.
I poured another drink and said to Binnie in Irish, ‘How old are you, boy?’
He answered in a kind of reflex, ‘Nineteen.’
‘If you’re faced with a search, you can always dump a gun fast, but a shoulder holster …’ I shook my head. ‘Get rid of it or you won’t see twenty.’
There was something in his eyes again, but it was the girl who answered for him, in English this time. ‘You should listen to the Major, Binnie. He’s had a lot of practice at that kind of thing.’
‘You said something about my being a murderer?’ I said.
‘Borneo, 1963. A place called Selengar. You had fourteen guerrillas executed whose only crime was fighting for the freedom of their country.’
‘A debatable point considering the fact that they were all Communist Chinese,’ I said.
She ignored me completely. ‘Then there was a Mr Hui Li whom you had tortured and beaten for several hours. Shot while trying to escape. The newspapers called you the Beast of Selengar, but the War Office didn’t want a stink so they put the lid on tight.’
I actually managed a smile. ‘Poor Simon Vaughan. Never did really recover from the eighteen months he spent in that Chinese prison camp in Korea.’
‘So they didn’t actually cashier you. They eased you out.’
‘Only the mud stuck.’
‘And now you sell guns.’
‘To people like you.’ I raised my glass and said gaily, ‘Up the Republic.’
‘Exactly,’ she said.
‘Then what are we complaining about?’ I took the rest of my whiskey down carefully. ‘Mr Meyer is waiting to see you not far from here. He simply wanted me to meet you first as a – a precautionary measure.’
‘We know exactly where Mr Meyer is staying. In a hotel in Lurgan Street. You have room fifty-three at the Grand Central.’
‘Only the best,’ I said. ‘It’s that public school education, you see. Now poor old Meyer, on the other hand, can never forget getting out of Germany in what he stood up in back in ’38 so he saves his money.’
Behind us the outside door burst open and a group of young men entered the bar.
There were four of them, all dressed exactly alike in leather boots, jeans and donkey jackets. Some sort of uniform, I suppose, a sign that you belonged. That it was everyone else who was the outsider. The faces and the manner of them as they swaggered in told all. Vicious young animals of a type to be found in any large city in the world from Belfast to Delhi and back again.
They were trouble and the barman knew it, his face sagging as they paused inside the door to look round, then started towards the bar, a red-haired lad of seventeen or eighteen leading the way, a smile on his face of entirely the wrong sort.
‘Quiet tonight,’ he said cheerfully when he got close.
The barman nodded nervously. ‘What can I get you?’
The red-haired boy stood, hands on the bar, his friends ranged behind him. ‘We’re collecting for the new church hall at St Michael’s. Everyone else in the district’s chipping in and we knew you wouldn’t like to be left out.’ He glanced around the bar again. ‘We were going to ask for fifty, but I can see things aren’t so good so we’ll make it twenty-five quid and leave it at that.’
One of his friends reached over the bar, helped himself to a pint pot and pumped out a beer.
The barman said slowly. ‘They aren’t building any church hall at St Mick’s.’
The red-haired boy glanced at his friends enquiringly, then nodded gravely. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘The truth, then. We’re from the IRA. We’re collecting for the Organization. More guns to fight the bloody British Army with. We need every penny we can get.’
‘God save us,’ the barman said. ‘But there isn’t three quid in the till. I’ve never known trade as bad.’
The red-haired boy slapped him solidly across the face, sending him back against the shelves, three or four glasses bouncing to the floor.
‘Twenty-five quid,’ he said. ‘Or we smash the place up. Take your choice.’
Binnie Gallagher brushed past me like a wraith. He moved in behind them without a word. He stood there waiting, shoulders hunched, the hands thrust deep into the pockets of the dark overcoat.
The red-haired boy saw him first and turned slowly. ‘And who the hell might you be, little man?’
Binnie looked up and I saw him clearly in the mirror, dark eyes burning in that white face. The four of them eased round a little, ready to move in on him and I reached for the bottle of Jameson.
Norah Murphy put a hand on my arm. ‘He doesn’t need you,’ she said quietly.
‘My dear girl, I only wanted a drink,’ I murmured and poured myself another.
‘The IRA, is it?’ Binnie said.
The red-haired boy glanced at his friends, for the first time slightly uncertain. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m a lieutenant in the North Tyrone Brigade myself,’ Binnie said. ‘Who are you lads?’
One of them made a break for the door on the instant and incredibly, a gun was in Binnie’s left hand, a 9 mm Browning automatic that looked like British Army issue to me. With that gun in his hand, he became another person entirely. A man to frighten the devil himself. A natural born killer if ever I’d seen one.
The four of them cowered against the bar, utterly terrified. Binnie said coldly, ‘Lads are out in the streets tonight spilling their blood for Ireland and bastards like you spit on their good name.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ the red-haired boy said. ‘We didn’t mean no harm.’
Binnie kicked him in the crutch, the boy sagged at the knees, turned and clutched at the bar with one hand to stop himself from falling. Binnie reversed his grip on the Browning, the butt rose and fell like a hammer on the back of that outstretched hand and I heard the bones crack. The boy gave a terrible groan and slipped to the floor, half-fainting, at the feet of his horrified companions.
Binnie’s right foot swung back as if to finish him off with a kick in the side of the head and Norah Murphy called sharply, ‘That’s enough.’
He stepped back instantly like a well-trained dog and stood watching, the Browning flat against his left thigh. Norah Murphy moved past me and went to join them and I noticed that she was carrying in her right hand a square, flat case which she placed on the bar.
‘Pick him up,’ she said.
The injured boy’s companions did as they were told, holding him between them while she examined the hand. I poured myself another Jameson and joined the group as she opened the case. The most interesting item on display was a stethoscope and she rummaged around and finally produced a large triangular sling which she tied about the boy’s neck to support the injured hand.
‘Take him into Casualty at the Infirmary,’ she said. ‘He’ll need a plaster cast.’
‘And keep your mouth shut,’ Binnie put in.
They went out on the run, the injured boy’s feet dragging between them. The door closed and there was only the silence.
As Norah Murphy reached for the case I said, ‘Is that just a front or the real thing?’
‘Would Harvard Medical School be good enough for you?’ she demanded.
‘Fascinating,’ I said. ‘Our friend here breaks them up and you put them together again. That’s what I call teamwork.’
She didn’t like that for she turned very pale and snapped the fastener of her case together angrily, but I think she had determined not to lose her temper.
‘All right, Major Vaughan,’ she said. ‘I don’t like you either. Shall we go?’
She moved towards the door. I turned and placed my glass on the counter in front of the barman, who was standing there waiting for God knows what axe to fall.
Binnie said, ‘You’ve seen nothing, heard nothing. All right?’
There was no need to threaten and the poor wretch nodded dumbly, his lip trembling. And then, quite suddenly, he collapsed across the bar and started to cry.
Binnie surprised me then by patting him on the shoulder and saying with astonishing gentleness, ‘Better times coming, Da. Just you see.’
But if the barman believed that, then I was the only sane man in a world gone mad.
It had started to rain and fog rolled in across the docks as we moved along the waterfront, Norah Murphy at my side, Binnie bringing up the rear rather obviously.
Neither of them said a word until we were perhaps half way to our destination when Norah Murphy paused at the end of a mean street of terrace houses and turned to Binnie. ‘I’ve a patient I must see here. I promised to drop a prescription in this evening. Five minutes.’
She ignored me and walked away down the street, pausing at the third or fourth door to knock briskly. She was admitted almost at once and Binnie and I moved into the shelter of an arched passageway between two houses. I offered him a cigarette which he refused. I lit one myself and leaned against the wall.
After a while he said, ‘Your mother – what was her maiden name?’
‘Fitzgerald,’ I told him. ‘Nuala Fitzgerald.’
He turned, his face a pale shadow in the darkness. ‘There was a man of the same name schoolmaster at Stradballa during the Troubles.’
‘Her elder brother,’ I said.
He leaned closer as if trying to see my face. ‘You, a bloody Englishman, are the nephew of Michael Fitzgerald, the Schoolmaster of Stradballa?’
‘I suppose I must be. Why should that be so hard to take?’
‘But he was a great hero,’ Binnie said. ‘He commanded the Stradballa flying column. When the Tans came to take him, he was teaching at the school. Because of the children he went outside and shot it out in the open, one against fifteen, and got clean away.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘A real hero of the revolution. All for the Cause only he never wanted it to end, Binnie, that was his trouble. Executed during the Civil War by the Free State Government. I always found that part of the story rather ironic myself, or had you forgotten that after they’d got rid of the English, the Irish set about knocking each other off with even greater enthusiasm?’
I could not see the expression on his face, yet the tension in him was something tangible between us.
I said, ‘Don’t try it, boy. As the Americans would say, you’re out of your league. Compared to me, you’re just a bloody amateur.’
‘Is that a fact now, Major?’ he said softly.
‘Another thing,’ I said. ‘Dr Murphy wouldn’t like it and we can’t have that now, can we?’
She settled the matter for us by reappearing at that precise moment. She sensed that something was wrong at once and paused.
‘What is it?’
‘A slight difference of opinion, that’s all,’ I told her. ‘Binnie’s just discovered I’m related to a piece of grand old Irish history and it sticks in his throat – or didn’t you know?’
‘I knew,’ she said coldly.
‘I thought you would,’ I said. ‘The interesting thing is, why didn’t you tell him?’
I didn’t give her a chance to reply and cut the whole business short by moving off into the fog briskly in the general direction of Lurgan Street.
The hotel didn’t have a great deal to commend it, but then neither did Lurgan Street. A row of decaying terrace houses, a shop or two and a couple of pubs making as unattractive a sight as I have ever seen.
The hotel itself was little more than a lodging-house of a type to be found near the docks of any large port, catering mainly for sailors or prostitutes in need of a room for an hour or two. It had been constructed by simply joining three terrace houses together and sticking a sign above the door of one of them.
A merchant navy officer came out as we approached and clutched at the railings for support. A girl of eighteen or so in a black plastic mac emerged behind him, straightened his cap and got a hand under his elbow to help him down the steps.
She looked us over without the slightest sense of shame and I smiled and nodded. ‘Good night, a colleen. God save the good work.’
The laughter bubbled out of her. ‘God save you kindly.’
They went off down the street together, the sailor breaking into a reasonably unprintable song and I shook my head. ‘Oh, the pity of it, a fine Catholic girl to come to that.’
Binnie looked as if he would have liked to put a bullet into me, but Norah Murphy showed no reaction at all except to say, ‘Could we possibly get on with it, Major Vaughan? My time is limited.’
We went up the steps and into the narrow hallway. There was a desk of sorts to one side at the bottom of the stairs and an old white-haired man in a faded alpaca jacket dozed behind it, his chin in one hand.
There seemed little point in waking him and I led the way up to the first landing. Meyer had room seven at the end of the corridor and when I paused to knock, we could hear music clearly from inside, strangely plaintive, something of the night in it.
Norah Murphy frowned. ‘What on earth is it?’
‘Al Bowlly,’ I said simply.
‘Al who?’
‘You mean you’ve never heard of Al Bowlly, Doctor? Why, he’s indisputably number one in the hit parade to any person of taste and judgement, or he would be if he hadn’t been killed in the London Blitz in 1941. Meyer listens to nothing else. Carries a cassette tape-recorder with him everywhere.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said.
I shook my head. ‘You’re now listening to Moonlight on the Highway, probably the best thing he ever did. Recorded with the Joe Loss orchestra on the 21st March, 1938. You see, I’ve become something of an expert myself.’
The door opened and Meyer appeared. ‘Ah, Simon.’
‘Dr Murphy,’ I said. ‘And Mr Gallagher. This is Mr Meyer.’ I closed the door and Meyer, who could speak impeccable English when it suited him, started to act the bewildered Middle-European.
‘But I don’t understand. I was expecting to meet a Mr Cork, commanding the official IRA forces in Northern Ireland.’
I walked to the window and lit a cigarette, aware of Binnie leaning against the door, hands in his pockets. It was raining harder than ever outside, bouncing from the cobblestones.
Norah Murphy said, ‘I am empowered to act for Michael Cork.’
‘You were to provide five thousand pounds in cash as an evidence of good faith. Where is it, please?’
She opened her case, took out an envelope and threw it on the bed. ‘Count it, please, Simon,’ Meyer said.
Al Bowlly was working his way through I double dare you as I reached for the envelope and Norah Murphy said quickly, ‘Don’t waste your time, Major. There’s only a thousand there.’
There was a moment of distinct tension as Meyer reached for the tape-recorder and cut Al Bowlly dead. ‘And the other four?’
‘We wanted to be absolutely certain, that’s all. It’s ready and waiting, no more than ten minutes’ walk from here.’
He thought about it for a moment, then nodded briefly. ‘All right. To business. Please sit down.’
He offered her the only chair and sat on the edge of the bed himself.
‘Will you have any difficulty in meeting our requirements?’ she asked.
‘The rifles will be no trouble at all. I am in the happy position of being able to offer you five hundred Chinese AK 47’s, probably the finest assault rifle in the world today. Extensively used by the Viet Cong in Vietnam.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ she said a trifle impatiently. ‘And the other items?’
‘Grenades are no problem and we can offer you an excellent range of sub-machine-guns. The early Thompsons still make a great deal of noise, but I would personally recommend you to try the Israeli Uzi. A remarkably efficient weapon. Absolutely first class, don’t you agree, Simon?’
‘Oh, the best,’ I said cheerfully. ‘There’s a grip safety which stops it firing if dropped, so we find it goes particularly well with the peasant trade. They’re usually inclined to be rather clumsy.’
She didn’t even bother to look at me. ‘And armour-piercing weapons?’ she said. ‘We asked for those most particularly.’
‘Rather more difficult, I’m afraid,’ Meyer told her.
‘But we must have them.’ She clenched her right hand and hammered it against her knee, the knuckles white. ‘They are absolutely essential if we are to win the battle in the streets. Petrol bombs make a spectacular show on colour television, Mr Meyer, but they seldom do more than blister the paint of a Saracen armoured car.’
Meyer sighed heavily. ‘I can deliver between eighty and one hundred and twenty Lahti 20 mm semi-automatic anti-tank cannons. It’s a Finnish gun. Not used by any Western Powers as far as I know.’
‘Is it efficient? Will it do the job?’
‘Ask the Major. He’s the expert.’
She turned to me and I shrugged. ‘Any gun is only as good as the man using it, but as a matter of interest, someone broke into a bank in New York back in 1965 using a Lahti. Blasted a hole through twenty inches of concrete and steel. One round in the right place will open up a Saracen like a tin can.’
She nodded, that hand still clenched, a strange, wild gleam in her eye. ‘You’ve used them? You’ve had experience of them in action, I mean?’
‘In one of the Trucial Oman States and the Yemen.’
She turned to Meyer. ‘You must guarantee competent instruction in their use. Agreed?’
She didn’t look at me. There was no need. Meyer nodded. ‘Major Vaughan will be happy to oblige, but for one week only and our fee will be an additional two thousand pounds on that agreed for the first consignment.’
‘Making twenty-seven thousand in all?’ she said.
Meyer took off his glasses and started to polish them with a soiled handkerchief. ‘Good, then we can proceed as provisionally agreed with your representative in London. I have hired a thirty-foot motor cruiser, berthed at Oban at the present time, rigged for deep-sea fishing. Major Vaughan will leave next Thursday afternoon at high tide and will attempt the run with the first consignment.’
‘And where is it to be landed?’ she asked.
Which was my department. I said, ‘There’s a small fishing port called Stramore on the coast directly south from Rathlin Island. There’s a secluded inlet with a good beach about five miles east. Our informant has been running whiskey in there from the Republic for the past five years without being caught so we should be all right. Your end is to make sure you have reliable people and transport on the spot to pick the stuff up and get the hell out of it fast.’
‘And what do you do?’
‘Comply with my sailing instructions and call in at Stramore. I’ll contact you there.’
She frowned as if thinking about it and Meyer said calmly, ‘Is it to your satisfaction?’
‘Oh yes, I think so.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Except for one thing. Binnie and I go with him.’
Meyer looked at me in beautifully simulated bewilderment and spread his hand in another of those Middle-European gestures. ‘But my dear young lady, it simply is not on.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because this is an extremely hazardous undertaking. Because of an institution known as the British Royal Navy which patrols the Ulster coast regularly these days with its MTBs. If challenged, Major Vaughan still stands some sort of a chance of getting away. He is an expert at underwater work. He carries frogman’s equipment. An aqualung. He can take his chances over the side. With you along, the whole situation would be different.’
‘Oh, I’m sure we can rely on Major Vaughan to see that the Royal Navy don’t catch us.’ She stood up and held out her hand. ‘We’ll see you next Thursday in Oban then, Mr Meyer.’
Meyer sighed, waved his arms about helplessly, then took her hand. ‘You’re a very determined young woman. You will not forget, however, that you owe me four thousand pounds.’
‘How could I?’ She turned to me. ‘When you’re ready, Major.’
Binnie opened the door for us and I followed her out and as we went down the corridor Al Bowlly launched into Goodnight but not goodbye.
4 (#ued5bab48-83bb-552e-93a3-84781cfb96f5)
In Harm’s Way
As we went down the steps to the street, a Land-Rover swept out of the fog followed by another, very close behind. They had been stripped to the bare essentials so that the driver and the three soldiers who crouched in the rear of each vehicle behind him were completely exposed. They were paratroopers, efficient, tough-looking young men, in red berets and flak jackets, their sub-machine-guns held ready for instant action.
They disappeared into the fog and Binnie spat into the gutter in disgust. ‘Would you look at that now, just asking to be chopped down, the dumb bastards. What wouldn’t I give for a Thompson gun and one crack at them.’
‘It would be your last,’ I said. ‘They know exactly what they’re doing, believe me. They perfected that open display technique in Aden. The crew of each vehicle looks after the other and without armour plating to get in their way, they can return fire instantly if attacked.’
‘Bloody SS,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘No, they’re not, Binnie. Most of them are lads around your own age, trying to do a dirty job the best way they know how.’
He frowned, and for some reason my remark seemed to shut him up. Norah Murphy didn’t say a word, but led the way briskly, turning from one street into another without hesitation.
Within a few minutes we came to a main road. There was a church on the other side, the Sacred Heart according to the board, a Victorian monstrosity in yellow brick which squatted in the rain behind a fringe of iron railings. There were lights in the windows, the sound of an organ, and people emerged from the open door in ones and twos to pause for a moment before plunging into the heavy rain.
As we crossed the road, a priest came out of the porch and stood on the top step trying to open his umbrella. He was a tall, rather frail-looking man in a cassock and black raincoat and wore a broad-brimmed shovel hat that made it difficult to see his face.
He got the umbrella up, started down the steps and paused suddenly. ‘Dr Murphy,’ he called. ‘Is that you?’
Norah Murphy turned quickly. ‘Hello, Father Mac,’ she said, and then added in a low voice, ‘I’ll only be a moment. The woman I saw earlier is one of his parishioners.’
Binnie and I moved into the shelter of a doorway and she went under the shelter of the priest’s umbrella. He glanced towards us once and nodded, a gentle, kindly man of sixty or so. Norah Murphy held his umbrella and talked to him while he took off his horn-rimmed spectacles and wiped rain from them with a handkerchief.
Finally he replaced the spectacles and nodded. ‘Fine, my dear, just fine,’ he said and took a package from his raincoat pocket. ‘Give her that when you next see her and tell her I’ll be along in the morning.’
He touched his hat and walked away into the fog. Norah Murphy watched him go then turned and tossed the package to me so unexpectedly that I barely caught it. ‘Four thousand pounds, Major Vaughan.’
I weighed the package in my two hands. ‘I didn’t think the Church was taking sides these days.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Then who in the hell was that?’
Binnie laughed out loud and Norah Murphy smiled. ‘Why, that was Michael Cork, Major Vaughan,’ she said sweetly and walked away.
Which was certainly one for the book. The package was too bulky to fit in any pocket so I pushed it inside the front of my trenchcoat and buttoned the flap as I followed her, Binnie keeping pace with me.
She waited for us on the corner of a reasonably busy intersection, four roads meeting to form a small square. There were lots of people about, most of them emerging from a large supermarket on our left which was ablaze with light to catch the evening trade, soft music, of the kind which is reputed to induce the right mood to buy, drifting out through the entrance.
There was a certain amount of traffic about, private cars mostly, nosing out of the fog, pausing at the pedestrian crossing, then passing on.
It was a typical street scene of the kind you’d expect to find in any large industrial city, except for one thing. There was a police station on the other side of the square, a modern building in concrete and glass and the entrance was protected by a sandbagged machine-gun post manned by Highlanders in Glengarry bonnets and flak jackets.
Norah Murphy leaned against the railings, clutching her case in both hands. ‘Occupied Belfast, Major. How do you like it?’
‘I’ve seen worse,’ I said.
Two men came round the corner in a hurry, one of them bumping into Binnie, who fended him off angrily. ‘Would you look where you’re going, now?’ he demanded, holding the man by the arm.
He was not much older than Binnie, with a thin, narrow-jawed face and wild eyes, and he wore an old trilby hat. He carried an attaché case in his right hand and tried to pull away. His companion was a different proposition altogether, a tall, heavily built man in a raincoat and cloth cap. He was at least forty and had a craggy, pugnacious face.
‘Leave him be,’ he snarled, pulling Binnie round by the shoulder and then his mouth gaped. ‘Jesus, Binnie, you couldn’t have picked a worse spot. Get the hell out of it.’
He pulled at his companion, they turned and hurried across the square through the traffic.
‘Trouble?’ Norah Murphy demanded.
Binnie grabbed her by the arm and nodded. ‘The big fella’s Gerry Lucas. I don’t know the other. They’re Bradys.’
Which being the Belfast nickname for members of the Provisional branch of the IRA was enough to make anyone move fast. We were already too late. A couple of cars had halted at the pedestrian crossing and a woman in a headscarf was half-way across pushing a pram in front of her, a little girl of five or six trotting beside her. A young couple shared an umbrella behind.
Lucas and his friend reached the opposite pavement and paused behind a parked car, where Lucas produced a Schmeisser machine pistol from beneath his raincoat and sprayed the machine-gun post.
In the same moment, his friend ran out into the open and tossed the attaché case in an arc through the rain and muffed things disastrously, for instead of dropping inside the machine-gun post, the case bounced from the sandbags to the gutter.
The two of them ran like hell for the shelter of the nearest side street and made it, the Highlanders being unable to open up with their machine-gun for the simple reason that the square seemed to be suddenly filled with panic-stricken people running everywhere.
The case exploded a split second later, taking out half of the front of the machine-gun post, dissolving every window in the square in a snowstorm of flying glass.
People were running, screaming, some on their hands and knees, faces streaming with blood, cut by the flying glass. One of the cars at the pedestrian crossing had been blown on to its side, the crossing itself had been swept clean.
Norah Murphy ran out into the square in what I believe was a purely reflex action and Binnie and I followed her towards the car which had turned over. A man was trying to climb out through the shattered side window, his face streaked with blood. I hauled him through and he slipped to the ground and rolled over on his back.
The woman who had been pushing the pram on the pedestrian crossing, was sprawled across the bonnet of the second car, half the clothes torn off her. From the condition of the rest of her she couldn’t be anything else but dead. The young couple who had been behind her were in the gutter on the far side of the road, people clustering round.
The pram was miraculously intact, lying against the wall, but when I righted it, the condition of the baby still strapped inside, was beyond description. The only good thing one could say was that death must have been instantaneous.
Norah Murphy was on her knees in the gutter beside the little girl who only a few moments before had gaily trotted beside her sister’s pram. She was badly injured, smeared with blood and dust, but still alive.
Norah opened her case and took out a hypodermic. As troops emerged cautiously from the police station she gave the child an injection and said calmly, ‘Get out of it, Binnie, before they cordon off the whole area. Get to Kelly’s if you can. Take the Major with you. He’s too valuable to lose now. I’ll see you there later.’
Binnie gazed down at the child, those dark eyes blazing, and then he did a strange thing. He reached for one of the limp hands and held it tightly for a moment.
‘The bastards,’ he said softly.
A Saracen swept into the square on the far side and braked to a halt, effectively blocking the street.
‘Will you get out of it, Binnie,’ she said.
I jerked him to his feet. He stood looking down for a moment, not at her, but at the child, then turned and moved across the square away from the Saracen without a word. I went after him quickly and he turned into a narrow alley and started to run. I followed at his heels and we twisted and turned through a dark rabbit warren of mean streets, the sounds from the square growing fainter although never actually fading away altogether.
We finally came to the banks of a narrow canal of some description, moved along the towpath past an old iron footbridge and turned into an entry. There was a high wooden gate at the end with a lamp bracketed to the wall above it. A faded sign read Kelly’s for Scrap. Binnie opened the judas and I followed him through.
There was a small yard inside, another lamp high on the wall of the house giving plenty of illumination, which made sense for all sorts of reasons if this was a place of refuge, as I suspected.
Binnie knocked on the back door. After a while, steps approached and he said in a low voice, ‘It’s me, Binnie.’
A bolt was withdrawn, the door opened. An old woman stood revealed, very old, with milk-white blind eyes and a shawl across her shoulders.
‘It’s me, Mrs Kelly,’ Binnie said. ‘With a friend.’
She reached for his face, cupped it in her hands for a moment, then smiled without a word, turned and led the way inside.
When she opened the door at the end of the passage into the kitchen, Lucas and the bomb-thrower were standing shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the table, Lucas holding the Schmeisser at the ready, his friend clutching an old .45 Webley revolver that looked too big for him.
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